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IHS: Genetec, Milestone top VMS rankings

LONDON—Since 2004, the first year of IHS’ VMS rankings, Copenhagen-based Milestone has had a monopoly on the top spot. Nine years later, the company still has the top spot, but it now has to share it with Genetec, a Montreal-based vendor.

In a highly fragmented VMS market—no company’s share exceeds 10 percent—Genetec and Milestone now have “exactly the same market share,” Josh Woodhouse, market analyst at IHS, a market research and consulting firm, told Security Systems News.

Genetec’s revenues from its VMS platform have grown at a double-digit rate in recent years, bolstered most recently by strong growth in Latin America and Asia with continued success in North America.

“It is estimated to have had the highest revenues for VMS software in the Americas in 2012,” Jon Cropley, principal analyst at IHS, said in a Genetec news release.

What’s behind Genetec’s rise? Analysts tend to point to the vendor’s sales strategy as an area that separates the company from competitors.

“Genetec often sells direct to integrators, meaning they bypass the distribution channel and they can typically charge more per license than when selling via a distributor,” Woodhouse said in an email. “Genetec has also tended to focus on more higher-value enterprise-level projects.”

Genetec also pours a healthy portion of its revenue into research and development. In 2012, the company committed 20 percent to this end, in the interest of fostering what President and CEO Pierre Racz calls “a culture of innovation.”

In a statement, Genetec noted that it tailors its VMS solution, Stratocast, to small and medium-sized businesses, a section of the market “currently underserved by existing VMS developers.” Building off its recent success, the company hopes to achieve widespread adoption of its unified platform, Security Center, targeting verticals that include public transportation, retail, gaming, parking and law enforcement.